A GOOD AGE: Four generations on Boston Harbor Islands

Tuesday

Oct 18, 2011 at 12:01 AMOct 18, 2011 at 6:10 PM

Laura Jones' 248-page book is sure to be a resource for those interested in Boston history and the harbor islands. The North Weymouth resident spent six years on the book, which uses old photographs, documents, receipts and colorful period postcards to help tell the story of her relatives, who lived and worked on the harbor islands

Sue Scheible

I’d like to be in Laura Jones’ shoes. I’d like to have her sense of place, of being rooted. When Jones, 53, steps onto her front porch in North Weymouth, she enjoys a view shared by four generations of her family. She looks out on a storied past – stories she has put together in a far-ranging book six years in the making.

“Generations: 1891-1940: Living on the Islands of Boston Harbor” was published this month by AuthorHouse. The 248-page work is rich in the kinds of intimate or quirky details you hear around holiday dinner tables.

It also has a wealth of old family photographs, documents, receipts and colorful period postcards. It’s sure to be a resource for others interested in Boston history and the harbor islands made famous by the late Edward Rowe Snow of Marshfield. Snow interviewed Jones’ family members.

Heartfelt and homespun, this is mainly a book about family, starting with Jones’ great-grandfather August Reekast, who emigrated from Prussia in 1891, married Christina Mckinnon from Nova Scotia, had eight children, and became a lobster fisherman on Outer Brewster. He was also captain for actress Julia Arthur, who lived in a mansion on Calf Island with her husband, Benjamin P. Cheney.

“I’m very, very proud of my family,” Jones said. “I did it because of their struggle. They came from different worlds, like we all did, and they built their lives. They worked very hard, they got money, bought a home in Chelsea, then lost everything in the Chelsea Fire in 1908.

“My great-grandfather brought all eight children out to the islands. That man took his family and rebuilt his life, twice, moving to North Weymouth in the 1920s.

“They should be known, not because they were heroes, but because they believed in the American Dream. To honor them, that’s why I did it.”

The Reekasts’ son, Gus, was also a fisherman and caretaker on Calf Island.

Their daughter, Ida, grew up on Calf and Brewster islands, married Edmund Knoll, from Germany, and moved to North Weymouth in the 1930s. But when the Depression came, the Knolls brought their two daughters, Christine Walsh and Rosemary Thibodeau, both of Weymouth, to live on Great Brewster.

Walsh and Thibodeau, who is Jones’ mother, recall playing on the islands.

Jones is part of the first generation that has not worked and lived on the harbor islands, but she has been camping on them since the 1990s with her husband, Chuck, and family.

The book started as a family history. “At the beginning, I was learning about people you only talked about at Christmas. Then others in the neighborhood were impressed. How many men could row from outer harbor to Boston and back once a week, plying a trade?” Her father, Larry, gave an early manuscript his stamp of approval: “Laura this is thunderous.”

He passed away in 2008, three months after her sister, Suzanne, also died at age 52, Her brother Brian died at age 30 in 1998.

Working on the book has helped to feel closer to them: “They inspired me,” she said.

For more information about the book, contact AuthorHouse or Laura Jones at empty222@msn.com

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@ledger.com, 617-786-7044, or The Patriot Ledger, Box 699159, Quincy 02269-9159. Read her Good Age blog on our website.